Ice ice baby

We're now in the Atlantic Ocean heading for Europe - escorted by sea gulls gliding alongside us as the swells rock us from side to side.

The Arctic was an amazing place to experience but the most beautiful part of our journey was seeing the south east coast of Greenland.

The mountains and glaciers there looked like something out of Lord of the Rings and we discovered an iceberg bigger than a football field - a perfect place for a banner we thought! Anais and Dean were the lucky ones to go onto the iceberg and they said it was quite a surreal experience. The surface was extremely hard and slippery and covered with little streams of water flowing through it. Anais told me she drank some water from one of the streams and that it was the best tasting water she ever had. Can you imagine - drinking water from melted ice that is thousands of years old? She also said she could hear the iceberg fizzing and popping all around them as they laid out the banner. Apparently this sound is called "Bergy Seltzer" and it's made by compressed gas bubbles being released as the ice melts.

I have never really thought much about icebergs until seeing them here for the first time but now I've become a little obsessed with them. And I've been wondering where they come from, why some of them have blue bits, how long they last for and if climate change is making more of them or less. I managed to catch Arne, our ice pilot, at dinner this evening and grilled him over the subject.

Here's a few cool facts I learned for those of you who are also pretty clueless about these wondrous icy things like me…

An iceberg begins its life as part of a glacier on land. Glaciers are basically massive pieces of frozen fresh water -- created when snow remains on land and builds up year after year, layer upon layer so that the snow crystals beneath are compressed more and more tightly - forming dense ice. Glaciers often move very slowly towards the ocean and break up into icebergs when they reach the coast or they form a floating ice shelf which gradually disintegrates into icebergs. Bergs can last several years depending on where they go. If they stay in cold waters they could float around for 50 years or more. The blue bits are where the ice is the most dense and all the gas has been squeezed out.

It's rather ironic that some of the ice bergs we've been admiring on our journey may not have existed if climate change wasn't happening. And one of the things Cairn Energy clearly struggles with - is "iceberg management". But they will only be bombarded with more of them as climate change worsens. Funny how nature could end up protecting itself by making more ice bergs to get in the way of the greedy oil industry. I hope a big piece of the massive ice island that broke off from Petermann glacier last month manages to make its way south and lingers right over Cairn's drill site so that they have to give up and go home. Wouldn't that be perfect?

It feels wrong that we've left Greenland while Cairn stays. I can't bare to think about what might happen up there if they don't stop what they're doing. While we wish we could have stayed and occupied the Stena Don again or perhaps taken on the Stena Forth drilling ship - there are other ways we can apply pressure to stop deep water drilling and that's why we heading for a meeting of politicians in Norway where they'll be discussing whether or not to impose a ban on new deepwater drilling. And meanwhile we are still campaigning against Cairn.

Hi Lisa...,
...and thanks so much for yet another most excellent blog. Sometimes I have to look down at my feet to make sure I'm not really the...

Hi Lisa...,
...and thanks so much for yet another most excellent blog. Sometimes I have to look down at my feet to make sure I'm not really there. The blue hues you mention makes me wonder what gasses are escaping, ...methane? There's a similar blue effect on some ice that builds up on the face of cliffs here, and I wonder if that occurs from a similar chemisty.
You mention the irony of nature's way of protecting herself from those that are blind and cannot see her beauty, ...and I think the other side of that coin is, isn't it also logical and reasonable that perhaps the splendor you see before you is nature's personal reward to you, and to all there for standing beside her in this, the manifestation and creation of your Love, in this unique and special time and place you have cared enough to be in. I guess it's true, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, ...and that is the very priceless gift Love brings by nature, to the hearts of yours, ...and of all those who really care.
Thanks so much Lisa, for your wonderful and inspirational posts...

Post a comment

OPTIONAL: Sign in now and avoid filling in forms! Not registered?
Sign up here
or login via facebook or google.

fmj
says:

I'm wondering why these persons insest to make our nature ugly and hurt it ...why they don't know that will hurt in the future those that are blind a...

I'm wondering why these persons insest to make our nature ugly and hurt it ...why they don't know that will hurt in the future those that are blind and cannot see her beauty,when I read what you write I was amazing I wish to come and see what you see and tast the fresh water ....those people believe in money but we believe in our mother the nature we must stop them in politic or by force we must stop drilling in deep water I have read about the effect climate change is having on icebergs this is the big problem how and when it will have a soulotion? I hope we have it in our live or God help us